


Six Thirty-Four

by freezeveganpolice



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 17:22:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5342231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freezeveganpolice/pseuds/freezeveganpolice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU (sort of). Sorey sleeps so long that the world has come to be rather like the one that we know: cars and trains abound, the air is polluted, the cities have expanded and run into one another. Almost all humans can see seraphim now, thanks to Sorey's blessing, but the world is not quite the same as the one Mikleo and Sorey dreamed of.</p><p>Post-endgame, so, endgame spoilers + general plot spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pendrago I

**Author's Note:**

> Sorey does not show up till Chapter 3, but I had to build up to it, so just bear with me here.

“Sorry, do you mind if I ask you something?”

The voice is high, clear. It reminds him almost of Alisha, even though it’s been nearly five hundred years since she died and fifty more than that since her voice was as young and pure. Mikleo looks at its source and nods once, taking the girl in with stride: she’s human, certainly, probably about twenty-two. Her hands are cupped loosely around a martini glass filled with electric pink liquid, which Mikleo can smell from several feet away.

She scoots closer to him, down the bar, and her blue eyes wander up to his hair. Ah. Here it comes.

“How do you get your hair that color?” she asks, breathlessly. One of her hands drifts up, almost as if to touch his hair, and then she thinks better of it and clasps it back around her glass, more tightly this time.

"It’s naturally pretty light,” Mikleo says, which is true. “I just tint it blue once every couple of months.” That isn’t true – it’s been silver-blue as long as he’s been alive. Or as long as he’s been alive as a seraph, at any rate. He has no way of knowing if it was a different color when he was an infant human. It’s been so many years since he last went to Lohgrin’s tower to review his own past that he no longer remembers.

The colors have faded from a lot of his memories. A few things stand out, still, like the purple of Heldalf’s energetic soul and the peculiar shade of pinkish-red of Rose’s hair, but for the most part his memories are a haze. The only thing that remains perfectly clear to him is the jade green of Sorey’s eyes and the bright, bright goldenrod of the feathers on his ears. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget those colors, and he works every day to keep them in mind.

 _I’ll wait_ , he remembers saying, _as long as it takes_.

He never imagined it would take this long.

The girl is saying something again, and he shakes himself from his reverie. “Sorry, what?” he asks, and she grins back at him with glistening, perfectly straight white teeth.

“I was saying it must have taken you a while to grow your hair out so long. How do you keep it so healthy when you keep dying it?”

“Conditioner,” Mikleo says drily, and knocks back the rest of his drink. He wipes his mouth with the back of one hand and stands to go. He lays a paper bill on the bar – it’s been hundreds of years and he still finds paper money extremely odd – and leaves without saying goodbye either to the girl or to the bartender.

 

Human alcohol doesn’t have much of an effect on seraphim. For the most part, they have high tolerances for human substances, although, like humans, they can fall prey to addiction. Mikleo keeps himself in check for the most part, but some days, when the smog is thick and the sun is hidden behind dark clouds that refuse to drop any rain and he can’t see the thin beam of light over Camlann where Sorey still sleeps, he needs to be somewhere, or someone, else.

The whiskey helps, but it’s not enough, and it’s not a good substitute, and he knows it.

The first few hundred years, he traveled with new Shepherds, helped them along their journeys. Soon, though, as human technology advanced and humans’ interests shifted, he’d given up on that. He took to checking in on the malevolent crucibles, mostly to take out his frustration with his own impatience on something that wouldn’t make him feel guilty. Lailah had wanted to find a way to destroy them, and Mikleo had helped her research it for nearly fifty years, but there was no evidence that any had been destroyed in the past. They just needed to be quelled every once in a while. That was all they could do.

They couldn’t stop the humans from building suburbs up around them either, particularly the ones in and around Lastonbell and Pendrago. The two cities had encroached onto one another’s space so firmly that it was difficult to draw the line between them anymore. They still felt different, though – even the humans knew that.

Mikleo returns to his apartment in one of Pendrago’s suburbs, situated above one of the many frozen yogurt shops that have cropped up all over the city in the past five years. He’s lived here longer than that, going on fifteen years, and in that time the space downstairs has changed names and businesses and smells five or six times. He likes the current one. He likes to come home and smell sugar and fruit wafting up his stairs.

He realizes, as he enters his bathroom, that he’s a bit tipsier than he had intended. The girl had taken him by surprise, and there had been a lot of his drink left when he’d chugged it in an effort to leave as quickly as possible. He fumbles with his colored eye contacts, struggling to take them out without poking himself in the eye at least once, and finally manages to return them to their case. Lazily, he conjures the small amount of pure water that he always does to keep them moist, and blinks blearily at his reflection in the mirror.

He still looks so damn young, probably twenty-five or twenty-seven at the oldest. It’s older than he looked when Sorey fell asleep, sure, but it’s not old enough for him to reasonably stay in any one place for long. He’s really pushed it with Pendrago this time, but there’s no way he can stay through the end of the year. The rest of the faculty at Pendrago U think he’ll be celebrating his fortieth birthday this year, and he’s obviously nowhere near forty. If they haven’t started to suspect he’s not human already, that will definitely be the last straw.

 _No,_ he thinks as he kicks off his shoes and drudges toward his bedroom, _it’s really time to move._ He’ll have to come up with yet another last name, maybe even a fake first name again. He’s done it before, many times, but he hates it the more he does it.

He hates that malevolence has come to manifest itself this way. He almost misses the simple fights, the runaway children whose fear of abandonment gave way to malevolence. Hell, sometimes he misses Heldalf. At least Heldalf had a good reason for being consumed with malevolence. Here, now, almost all humans are at least a little malevolent. Time and evolution has made them more cynical, and also more afraid.

Almost all of them can see seraphim now, thanks to Sorey’s blessing. There are always multiple Shepherds and multiple Squires travelling the world simultaneously, although now they come out of training schools and are selected based on psychological aptitude and proficiency in both politics and religion. Most of their job now, though, is trying to combat the fear of seraphim that runs rampant through human society. Humans have always feared what they cannot control, and if they feared the seraphim’s influence before they could see them, now they seem to fear them even more. They panic, and either lash out in anger – why should the seraphim get to live forever, control the elements, generally stay young and beautiful – or recoil in fear.

They don’t turn into hellions anymore. It’s been many years since Mikleo encountered a full-blown hellion. But the low level of malevolence is almost constant; it’s been equally as long since he last encountered a human with absolutely no malevolence whatsoever.

Then again, it’s been a long time since he last elected to travel with a Shepherd. He thinks, as he flops face-first onto his bed, that perhaps those two things might be related.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is gonna be a self-indulgent world-buildy exploration mess with no real plot so if that's not your jam, don't jam. If that is your jam, though, I have like 7 chapters of this written and basically ready to post. Only one of them is responsible for the Mature rating, and might actually border on explicit so uh... look out for Chapter 7. I'll warn you all in the Beginning Notes. 
> 
> I conceived this baby while on a plane for Thanksgiving after reading Gods Behaving Badly and watching 3 episodes of AKA Jessica Jones (which is 100% responsible for Mikleo's drinking habits. They came at me with no warning. Poor buddy does not know how to deal with depression well. Or how to recognize depression. My tiny son.).
> 
> Also: this is sort of slow burn (like... medium burn....). It will also probably contain some Lailah/Zaveid because I fell head over heels for the Dad/Mom ship and I've already resigned myself to living in a garbage heap.


	2. Pendrago II

The sun is already high in the sky, streaming into his room in hot, bright beams when the banging on his door starts. Mikleo groans and rolls over, about to shout irritably that he’s busy, but Edna beats him to the punch. “Get out here, Meebo,” she barks from his front door, downstairs. “There’s something you need to see.”

Six hundred years later, and she still calls him that idiot nickname. Mikleo wouldn’t believe such behavior from anyone else, nor, he thinks with grudging fondness, would he tolerate it. Still, though, he hasn’t seen Edna in three or four years now. It’s not a terribly long time, for seraphim, but it’s still notable that she’s here now. He hastily pulls his hair up into a bun so as to look like slightly less of a mess, changes into a fresh pair of pants, and heads down the stairs two at a time.

She’s standing right outside the door, tucked under a dark red parasol to protect her from the sun. Unlike Mikleo, she looks exactly the same as she did six hundred years ago, other than the tattoo she added roughly thirty years ago. An intricate dragon curls up and over her left thigh, its face fierce and yet reassuring. Mikleo has never asked, but he’s sure it’s meant to be Eizen: a reminder of what used to happen to seraphim whose despair was too deep. Her dirty blonde hair is still cut short, still tied into one side ponytail, though today it’s with a deep orange ribbon rather than her usual green. She’s taken to wearing dark eyeliner in the past ten years, which Mikleo can only assume is an attempt to make her look older. Despite the fact that she’s hundreds of years older than he is, she still looks like a child, barely more than fourteen.

“It’s gone,” she starts to say, and then leans up, sniffs him, and pulls a face. “You smell like whiskey,” she says matter-of-factly, and Mikleo rolls his eyes.

“What’s gone?” he asks, ignoring her comment about his breath.

Edna ignores him, and instead tugs at one of the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt with obvious distaste. “You slept in this,” she notes, and Mikleo pulls his arm back. “You _slept_?” she asks then, looking up at him quizzically.

“It’s exhausting being awake all the time,” he says. “There’s only so much to do every 24 hours, and I…” He doesn’t need to finish. Edna knows.

Mikleo likes sleeping because he likes dreaming.

“What’s gone?” he repeats, and this time Edna looks away to the east, back toward Ladylake, Elysia, and Camlann.

“The light,” she says, and Mikleo follows her gaze.

It’s hard to tell through the city’s pollution, but he’s sure she’s right. The beam of light where Sorey sleeps at Camlann isn’t there, which means either Sorey has been interrupted, and they’re all in for a hell of a lot of trouble, or he’s awoken. Given all the measures that everyone took to make sure that Sorey would not be disturbed, the second seems much more likely.

Mikleo knows he probably looks totally dumbstruck, but he can barely keep himself from conjuring a river and riding it all the way to Camlann. He forces himself to look away from the mystery in the east and back down at Edna, who is staring up at him with the smallest smirk on her doll lips. “You’re going,” she observes, and he nods, swallowing nervously. “You’ll have to bring him normal people clothes,” she points out. “He’s gonna stick out like a sore thumb in that Shepherd cloak.”

“The world has changed how much in six hundred years and you’re worried about the clothes he’s wearing?” Mikleo groans, and Edna shrugs.

“If people stare at him, he’s not gonna be able to process any of these changes,” she says. “Just bring him a sweater or something.”

Mikleo turns and heads back up the stairs, with Edna treading quietly at his heels. He rifles through his drawers, looking for something that might fit Sorey. Even though Mikleo has filled out some, he’s sure his shoulders still aren’t quite as broad as Sorey’s. He quickly finds that Edna was right in suggesting a sweater – the best thing Mikleo can find is an oversized brown cardigan and a couple of slightly stretched-out v-necks. He looks despairingly at his pants drawer, but Edna shakes her head. “His pants are probably fine,” she tells him. He swallows nervously, throws the assortment of t-shirts and the cardigan into the bag he usually uses to take his notes and laptop to the classes he teaches.

And then he remembers. He has to teach class. “Oh, no,” he breathes aloud, and Edna rolls her eyes as she perfectly follows his train of thought.

“I’m sure the kids won’t mind having no class,” she says.

“I have to call in,” he says, drops the bag on the bed, and hurries out of the room. Behind him, Edna mutters something that sounds like “Ugh, still so responsible.”

He isn’t totally sure where he left his cell phone – if he’s being honest, he’s never quite sure where it is, since it’s not like he uses it all that frequently. Frankly, he misses the time, only a few years ago, when your phone was anchored to your wall. For one thing, he couldn’t lose it. For another, if he wasn’t home, no one could reach him.

Now anyone can call him at any time. Like now, for instance, he finds the phone on the floor in a pocket of yesterday’s pants, vibrating in a frenzy due to an incoming call. He hastily picks it up, swipes the screen, and holds the phone to his ear. “Lailah,” he says.

“Did you see?” she asks breathlessly.

“Of course I saw,” he says.

“I told him,” Edna says loudly from behind him, where she’s studying one of the stone figures he keeps on his bedside table. “Is this a statuette of Sorey?” she says, holding it up between her forefinger and thumb.

“Put that back,” Mikleo hisses, and turns his attention back to the phone.

“Are you going to go get him there, or are you going to let him come to you?” Lailah is asking.

“I… don’t think he’ll be able to find his way through the world as it is now,” Mikleo sighs. “Besides, how would he know where I am? Or any of us, for that matter?”

“I’m sure he knows,” Lailah says gently. “I’m sure he could find you anywhere.”

Mikleo blushes and is very glad that Edna probably can’t hear Lailah’s soft voice from across the room. “I’m going to him,” he says.

“We can come with if you like,” Lailah says. “But I’m guessing you’d rather we didn’t, at least for now.”

Mikleo smiles. “For now,” he admits, “I do want it to just be me.” Lailah giggles quietly on the other end of the phone. “Besides,” he adds in a hurry, “the hospital needs you in – where is it now? Marlind?”

“I’m just a nurse this time around,” Lailah chuckles, “but thanks all the same.” Mikleo moves the phone and is about to swipe to hang up when he hears her voice one more time. “And Mikleo?”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t be nervous, okay?”

“Okay, sure, Mom,” he snorts.

“I told you not to think of me as a mom,” Lailah scolds him. “Now, I’ve got to go. The next shift is starting and I need to clear out. Keep in touch!”

Across the room, Edna is holding a different stone figurine, this time a stylized lion with bat wings. “Heldalf?” she asks, and Mikleo nods tiredly. “This artist is crap,” she notes, and sets the figurine back down. And then she tells him, “Call your boss,” and he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love tiny big sister Edna <3_<3 I also love picturing modern Edna as basically just Lisbeth Salander, but with earthquakes instead of hacking, hence the dragon tattoo. I thought for a while that'd be kind of fucked up, but realized that after six hundred-ish years she'd probably rather have a relatively accurate dragon than an inaccurate artist's interpretation of Eizen's human face. I think she'd like to have some memento of him on her, so a dragon Eizen would be better, sentimentally, than no Eizen at all.


	3. Camlann I

Mikleo tells his boss it’s a family emergency and that he’ll likely be back in two weeks. He declines using the university’s money to get a flight to Ladylake, instead claiming he’ll take a cab. Really, he takes a bus line to Lastonbell and heads out into the remains of the forest. The river still runs through the forest and around the desert back to Marlind. It’s the quickest way he knows to travel, and also his favorite.

Mikleo strips off his businessman’s shoes and the thin, formal black socks he wears to work, and steps into the water, re-shouldering his bag to be sure that it won’t slip off when he starts to move. He wiggles his toes in the water, shivering as he feels himself slip quite literally back into his element.

Mikleo runs, and the river runs with him.

He flies over the water with the waves and the current nipping at his heels, zipping over the boulders and rocks that dot it, leaping so quickly over the small bridges that the humans nearby only notice him as a windy white blur. He’s in Marlind quicker than any plane could have got him there, and from there it’s only a matter of navigating the remaining side creeks to the lake.

He slows then, aware that Ladylake is a busy place and that a man running in on the water could in no way be mistaken for a human. He hadn’t bothered to put in his usual brown contacts before leaving, and is instead sporting a pair of sleek black sunglasses. He hitches a ride in a cab from the closest bridge to the city, and then sets off on the walk up to Elysia.

About a hundred years ago, he, Lailah, Zaveid, and Edna had all conspired to get Elysia and the surrounding area cordoned off as a state park. It hadn’t really been an issue before then – the humans still considered it sacred, for the most part, although the occasional tourist did drop by and find himself promptly ejected by one of the guardian seraphs – but then the humans had started to grow more numerous, the cities had expanded, and Mikleo had grown worried: what if the ever-increasing suburbs of Ladylake extended out into Elysia? Not only would that put the humans in danger, but it would also potentially mean Sorey would wake up in a totally different environment, or even that the ruins that contain him could be destroyed.

Mikleo couldn’t stand for that. He’d already been working as an archaeology professor at the time. It wasn’t so unreasonable for him to propose making it a protected area. With the support of Lailah, who was a surgeon at that point in time, Zaveid, who had been working for the military, and Edna was always just scary and cute enough to get anyone to give her what she wanted, it wasn’t hard for them all to get Elysia, Aroundight Forest, and the ruins containing Camlann labeled both as sanctified holy ground and as government-protected space.

It has its downside, though, for Mikleo is having a hell of a time getting past the gate at the entrance of the forest. The human guard in the little cabin at the entrance insists that the park is closed until someone can come and determine why the Shepherd’s Light has gone out. Mikleo hates that phrasing, but hates even more that she won’t just let him in the damn forest.

_I should have just rode another fucking river,_ he thinks exasperatedly, as she explains to him in a rather flustered tone that she really can’t let him in, she’s very sorry.

“I’m a professor of archaeology,” he sighs. “I’m actually an expert on these ruins, so if anyone can figure out what’s happened to the light, it’s me.” He doesn’t add that he grew up here, or that he’s 90% sure why the Shepherd’s Light no longer illuminates the sky over Camlann. He does his best to keep the desperation out of his voice as he says, “So if you could just let me in for a few minutes, so I can take some observations…”

If Zaveid were here, he’d be flirting with the girl nonstop to get her to let him in. Even better, he’d probably be trying to get Mikleo to go for her himself. Mikleo on his own, however, refuses to sink to such lows. He does not need to manipulate this poor, unsuspecting, likely underpaid state worker.

“I’m trained to not disturb anything,” he says. “I’ll be in and out and no one will even know I was here.”

“I’m really sorry, sir,” she says. “I think I’d lose my job.”

Mikleo nods, trying to keep the irritation off his face. “I understand,” he says. “I’ll come back later.”

He hasn’t done what he’s about to do in a very, very long time. He really, really hopes he can keep it up for long enough to get past her and into the unseeable depths of the forest.

He walks back down the mountain a small ways, steps behind a tree, and takes a deep breath. He pulls his hair free of its bun and then re-ties it into a ponytail, breathing deeply and putting all his energy into focusing. And then he conceals himself in a bubble, and walks. Calm, cool, collected, and utterly invisible, he glides slowly past her. The bubble is shrinking fast, and he’s sure she’ll hear the quiet popping sound it makes if he doesn’t make it a little further into the forest, but when the bubble pops and he freezes warily, nothing happens.

Mikleo still knows the forest like the back of his hand. It has been nearly fifty years since he last allowed himself to visit and check on the pit where Sorey sleeps – _slept_ , he forces himself to think now. For the first time in a very long time, he doesn’t stop in at Elysia to say hi to all those who still remain there, and instead he pushes onward to the ruins and the road that leads to Camlann.

The ruins have become increasingly overgrown over the years. Mikleo appreciates that, to a certain extent: he likes that as Maotelus returns to the earth, the earth reclaims the space that created the Age of Chaos. Ivy crawls across the floors and walls, and wildflowers poke through the cracks of the stone bricks. From an archaeologist’s standpoint, however, nature’s reclamation of Mt. Mabinogio is a problem. The unstudied parts of the ruins are starting to cave under the weight of the encroaching plant life, and the sunlight beating through the holes in the ceiling is slowly fading the marks on the walls. Mikleo makes a note to come back as soon as he is able and finish recording everything he can about these ruins.

They look so different now compared to the way they looked when he was a child, or even when he was eighteen and in hot pursuit of Heldalf. He’s sure they must have been this overrun the last time he was here, but he hadn’t really been taking it all in then. Now, as much as he hates to admit it, he’s rather lost. He must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, for now he’s in a courtyard he doesn’t recognize. The sun washes the whole room in a pale grey from behind distant clouds, and he walks toward the center of the room so that he can look for other exits.

The ground shifts underneath him. Startled, he looks down and sees the floor collapsing under his feet, crumbling away as he watches. He tries to step away, but the ground is giving way too quickly, and he feels himself falling. _Now, of all times,_ he thinks bitterly, and reaches one arm up as he falls in preparation to summon his staff.

Instead, a gloved hand catches him firmly by the wrist.

For a second, Mikleo doesn’t dare to look up, or even to hope that he’ll see that familiar face if he does, but then he remembers why he’s there. The light has gone out. Sorey is either dead or awake, and –

He looks up, directly into a pair of shining green eyes, and feels the smallest of smiles tug at the corners of his mouth. “Sorey,” he breathes, and grasps Sorey’s hand with his other hand.

The former Shepherd hauls him up easily, with barely a strain on his muscles, and Mikleo finds himself seated beside his kneeling best friend. Sorey looks at him, eyes still gleaming under the sun, and then cocks his head to one side. “Mikleo,” he says slowly, as if tasting the name on his tongue.

Mikleo realizes he’s been holding his breath, and lets it out slowly so that Sorey won’t notice.

“What are you _wearing_?” Sorey asks as his eyes drop down to Mikleo’s long-sleeved henley and on down to his denim jeans and black dress shoes.

“Sorey,” Mikleo repeats, and then forces himself to focus. “How much do you remember?”

“I remember you,” Sorey answers immediately. A wide grin spreads across his face. “And I remember Gramps, and…” The smile fades. “Heldalf. And I remember firing the gun, and you and the other seraphim…” He looks at Mikleo, suddenly surprised to see him. “I thought you would be gone,” he says. “How are you here?”

“I promised I’d wait for you, didn’t I?” Mikleo scoffs, and stands, dusting himself off at the knees and adjusting his bag. “Well, I waited.”

Sorey, too, stands, and Mikleo discovers to mixed contentment and anger that Sorey is still taller than him by a few inches. “How long did you wait?”

“A long time,” Mikleo says.

“How long?”

“Six hundred thirty four years,” Mikleo admits.

“Tell me you didn’t spend all of them here…”

“No,” Mikleo scoffs, “though I did stop by to say hi every once in a while.” He’d been by once a year for the first several hundred years that Sorey slept, but then Lailah had pointed out that it only made him sad. He’d spaced out his visits a bit more after that, if only to keep her from worrying. “I do have a job, you know.”

“What, you travel with the current Shepherd?” Sorey asks, completely sincerely, and Mikleo closes his eyes. It’s going to take a while to explain how much things have changed.

“No, I… I teach classes about archaeology. To humans,” he starts.

“They can see you?” Sorey exclaims excitedly. “So it worked! Humans and seraphim live together!”

“Yes, but…”

“That’s wonderful, Mikleo!” Sorey says, and before Mikleo can protest, he finds himself pulled into a tight hug. His face presses easily into Sorey’s neck, and his hands curl instinctively around his back.

Six hundred and thirty four years later, it still feels completely natural to have him here, touchable, hearable. “It’s not like we imagined, Sorey,” Mikleo mumbles into Sorey’s collarbone, his voice barely audible. “It’s not the world we dreamed of.”

Sorey pulls back, but keeps his hands on Mikleo’s shoulders. “What do you mean?”

“Humans and seraphim… we live together, but we don’t always get along. Humans are kind of afraid of us. A lot of us just pretend to be human. It’s easier that way,” Mikleo explains. He can’t look at Sorey as he says it – he doesn’t want to watch the excitement leave his eyes.

Instead, Sorey laughs, tossing his head back so that his feathered earrings swish artfully back and forth. “You? A human? I’m sure nobody believes that.”

“They do,” Mikleo says stubbornly. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“You’re way too pretty to be a human, Mikleo,” Sorey chuckles, and runs a hand through his own hair before twisting his fingers through the ends of Mikleo’s ponytail. “And no human’s hair would _ever_ look like this.”

That’s when Mikleo notices.

Sorey’s hair doesn’t look human anymore either. It’s still the same shade of chestnut brown, still cut short with bangs that swoop over Sorey’s eyebrows, but the tips of it are a deep red, similar to Lailah’s. Without thinking, Mikleo reaches out and presses two fingers to the side of Sorey’s neck. Sorey shivers and flinches away, but Mikleo has felt all he needed to. Sorey’s skin is incredibly hot to the touch, although he’s sure this is exaggerated by his own cool skin.

“You’re a seraph now,” Mikleo realizes aloud.

“I’m a what?” Sorey laughs. “Mikleo…”

“You are,” Mikleo insists. “You… look. Try and light that patch of grass on fire.”

“With what? I don’t have any flint.”

“With your – ugh, okay. Just think about it, really hard. Just take a good long look at that patch of grass and picture it burning.” Mikleo struggles to remember how he first learned to use his water powers; they’d always come naturally to him, as far as he recalls, although it’s been many years since he had anything less than a masterful grasp on them.

Sorey stares at the patch of grass, squints hard at it, clenches his fists. Nothing happens. He looks imploringly at Mikleo, who shrugs. Mikleo doesn’t think he’s wrong, but he doesn’t really know what else to tell Sorey at this point. Maybe Lailah will know.

“You always did like to tease me,” Sorey says with a grin, and reaches in to jab Mikleo in the ribs. The water seraph is just as ticklish as he was six hundred years ago, but he no longer reflexively reaches out to tickle Sorey back. It takes him a moment to catch his bearings and tackle Sorey with ferociously tickling fingers.

Mikleo’s fingers are still faster and more agile, and soon Sorey is backing away, laughing so hard there are tears in his eyes. Mikleo delivers one last tickle-jab to Sorey’s stomach, and Sorey lets out a coughing yelp of laughter.

Three feet away, the patch of grass bursts into flame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, Sorey may be Shepherd Jesus but only Mikleo can walk (or in this case run) on water. Show-off.


	4. Elysia I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone for all the positive feedback! I'm trying to post as often as I can, but I'm also trying to space out chapter postings so I still have some stuff to post next week when my finals start and I have to leave my current residence (see: the trash) in favor of Actual Exam Hell.

After the flames are put out, Mikleo leads Sorey back out of the ruins and to Elysia. The older seraphim there are pleased to see them both: it’s been a few years since any of them have seen Mikleo, and the whole six hundred thirty four since they last saw Sorey. They fawn over him as delicately as possible, well aware that he probably doesn’t remember any of their names. One of the fire seraphs, who lives in a house a few away from Sorey’s old house, offers to teach him how to keep his powers under control.

Sorey isn’t having too much trouble, though. He’s only set one thing on fire so far, so as long as he keeps his emotions in check, he doesn’t think he’ll be in too much trouble.

Mikleo isn’t so sure. “She’s serious about the offer,” he tells Sorey. “It would definitely be useful.”

“And I’m serious about declining it,” Sorey says. “At least for now. I want to see the world. I want to see how everything’s changed. Imagine how many new things there are to find!”

Mikleo smiles, but his violet eyes are sad. Sorey is still so eager, and Mikleo can hardly bear to let him see the ways the world has changed. “We can start here,” he sighs after a moment of consideration, and heads toward Gramps’s house, which is now technically his. Not that he ever spends much time in Elysia, but as Gramps’s surviving adoptive child, he is the only real heir to the property. He offered, several hundred years ago, to let someone else take it. Several seraphim had moved into Elysia in an effort to escape human growth – Elysia really needed all the housing space it could get.

But the seraphim in Elysia had quietly refused him, and instead took the house that had been his as a child. They left Gramps’s house and Sorey’s house completely untouched. “For the Shepherd when he returns,” was all that had been said, so Mikleo had taken to keeping all his non-academic logs in Gramps’s house.

“I kept journals of everything,” Mikleo explains as he heads through Gramps’s house to a bookshelf in the back room where the old man used to store his pipe. He pulls the first of several hand-bound leather journals off the shelf, blows some dust off it, and hands it to Sorey, who immediately opens it and starts leafing through it.

“Everything?” he gasps, and Mikleo blushes a little.

“Everything I explored,” he says. “I figured you’d want to see when you woke up.”

But Sorey is barely listening, already hyper-focused on the pages in front of him. He scoots up against a wall and studies the journal in detail, from the beginning. Mikleo leans back against the bookcase, folds his arms, and watches Sorey read.

Even though it’s been hundreds of years, and even though Mikleo has aged roughly ten years in all that time, Sorey still looks seventeen. Other than the slight change in his hair color, he looks exactly the same as when he left. Even his mannerisms are the same, the way he thumbs excitedly at the pages and then reigns himself in to keep from tearing them, the bright interest that literally glitters in his green eyes. Mikleo can’t help but smile; just having Sorey back is enough to make him feel the same peaceful happiness he did as a child.

They stay that way for hours, with Sorey occasionally standing and switching to the next notebook, devouring the knowledge that Mikleo meticulously recorded in his journals. Every once in a while, Sorey looks up at him and turns the book around to show him something. The first time, it’s one of Mikleo’s sketches. “You drew this?” Sorey asks, pointing to a charcoal sketch of a waterfall running through some ruins Mikleo had explored in the far east of Hyland. Mikleo nods. “That’s incredible, Mikleo,” Sorey says. “I didn’t know you could draw.”

“I’ve always been able to draw,” Mikleo says, and rolls his eyes. “You just weren’t paying attention.”

“I was always paying attention to you,” Sorey says, totally sincere, and turns the book back around to keep reading.

It’s well into the night when Sorey finishes the last notebook. Mikleo has finally given up watching him, and is curled up in one of Zenrus’s old chairs in the next room, reading one of the many old books he once enjoyed as a child. He doesn’t see Sorey fish one last, smaller notebook out from behind the row of the others. He doesn’t see Sorey open it, smile to himself, and tuck it into one of the back pockets of his pants.

Mikleo only looks up when Sorey walks into the room and sits down cross-legged in front of him. Sorey looks at him expectantly, and Mikleo raises an eyebrow. “Yes, Sorey?”

“I… picked out some places I want to go,” Sorey says.

“It’s the middle of the night,” Mikleo points out.

“I didn’t mean right now, just… soon?”

“Of course,” Mikleo promises, and closes his book. “For now you should probably sleep, though.”

“I don’t feel tired at all,” Sorey says, and looks down at his hands as if he expects to see them in a new light. “And I did just sleep for several hundred years.”

“Sorey…” Mikleo sighs and stands up so that he can feel, for the first time in many, many years, like he’s actually taller than his friend. “This is going to take some getting used to, but you’re not going to feel tired. But you have to get used to sleeping. And it does still renew your energy, even if you don’t feel like you need that.”

Sorey stands, and Mikleo’s shining illusion of tallness is shattered. “I’ll race you to see who gets the bed?” he says, grinning, and Mikleo smirks.

“Your house is just the same as you left it,” he points out. “Between here and there, there are two beds.”

“Yeah, but then you won’t be in the same room.”

That throws Mikleo off guard. “Is that a problem?”

“No, it’s just…” Sorey trails off, shakes his head to clear it, and then looks Mikleo in the eyes. “It’s just that I remember you. I don’t know if I’ll remember anything else. Like my house. I think, if I wake up in the morning, and you’re not there…”

“Do you think you’ll forget me?” Mikleo asks, straining to keep the hurt out of his voice.

“No, never. But I don’t want to wake up and not know where I am again.” Sorey’s face is shadowed. Mikleo had hoped he’d never have to see him look so haunted again after Heldalf was dealt with.

“Is that what happened in Camlann?” Mikleo narrows his eyes and folds his arms. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want you to worry. It’s fine now, right?” Sorey’s face brightens one again. “So, I’ll race you to the bed in _this_ house?”

“You take it,” Mikleo says. “I’ll be on the floor.”

Sorey looks as if he’s about to argue, but then he sees the stern set to Mikleo’s jaw and nods, accepting defeat. “Okay,” he says, “but wherever we are tomorrow, we switch on that – deal?”

“Deal.”

 

Mikleo does not sleep at all, in fact. He stays up the whole night, barely able to admit to himself that the reason he doesn’t sleep is that he’s afraid Sorey won’t wake up again. That if he slips off into dreams for a few hours, he’ll wake up to find that he imagined the whole thing, or to find that Sorey has gone back to sleep for another hundred years. He knows it’s irrational. All the same, it keeps him up all night, watching Sorey’s chest slowly rise and fall, listening to the quiet steadiness of his sleep breathing.

He watches Sorey sleep for six hours, and then, when he notices Sorey is starting to rouse, he curls onto his side and pretends to have been asleep the whole time. Sorey buys it completely, and gently nudges him awake. “Mikleo?” he whispers, and Mikleo lazily opens one eye and rolls over to face him.

“Mm?”

“Can we go explore?”

“Now?” Mikleo asks, even though he’s been awake the whole time and it’s probably not actually _that_ early. When Sorey nods, Mikleo smiles and gives in. “Yeah,” he says, “sure.” He sits up, pulls his knees into his chest and looks at Sorey. “We have to go check in with Lailah first, though. I think she was worried about me. And you, of course.”

“Of course!” Sorey says brightly, and sits up in bed. “And Edna and Zaveid, and Ro-“

Mikleo actually watches the realization hit him. “I can take you to her grave, if you want,” he offers quietly. “And Alisha’s.”

Sorey thinks about it for a moment, and then shakes his head. “Not today.”

Mikleo understands, and stands, crosses the room, and pulls the spare clothes out of his bag. “You’ll want to put these on, then,” he says. “If we’re going to Marlind, you’ll need to look like a modern human.”

“But I’m not modern or a human, anymore,” Sorey protests, holding up the cardigan in front of him. “What _is_ this?”

“It’s a sweater,” Mikleo sighs. “You wear it over the t-shirt.”

“There’s no tea on this shirt…” Sorey holds up one of the v-necks, this one cream-colored.

“I won’t pretend to know why it’s called that. Put that on, then the sweater, and we can go.”

Sorey continues to look puzzled, but does as he’s told.

He doesn’t turn around, either, just strips off his current shirt and tosses it aside. Mikleo thinks for a moment that he ought to avert his eyes, and then thinks to himself that he’s being ridiculous. He and Sorey bathed together as children, for crying out loud. Besides, he hasn’t seen Sorey in over six hundred years; the least he can do is indulge himself a little and allow himself to look.

Sorey is still thin but toned. Mikleo can see the muscles of his shoulders working under his skin as he twists around to grab the shirt and pull it over his head. For a moment, his face gets stuck in the neck-hole, and he has to shimmy a little to get it on. Mikleo watches appreciatively as Sorey’s abs flex with the movement, but once Sorey’s head is freed, Mikleo respectfully looks away. He turns fully around so that Sorey can’t see the flush creeping onto his cheeks.

Mikleo had kind of hoped that six hundred years of waiting would kill his romantic feelings for Sorey. He’d been content to spend eighteen years pining and the next few hundred getting over it, but if anything, the long wait seems to have intensified his feelings. He briefly considers getting it over with then and there, telling Sorey that he’s in love with him, has been for a very long time, and would he please just either accept or reject a proposal to start a relationship – but Sorey has only just awoken, and he’s so amped up about going out into the world that Mikleo cannot justify complicating that simple emotion.

While Sorey puzzles his way around the cardigan, Mikleo takes the opportunity to change as well, back into his usual attire: slacks and a button-down, covered by a tight turquoise sweater. He smooths out any wrinkles he can see, schools his face back into a reasonably pale shade and peeks back over his shoulder.

Sorey’s t-shirt is tight, as Mikleo might have expected. He silently makes a note to either A) get Sorey shirts of his own as soon as possible or B) never, ever let Sorey buy shirts that actually fit him. He quickly discovers that A is the better option; he can barely focus on anything but the way the shirt stretches over Sorey’s chest. It’s a little better once Sorey shrugs the cardigan fully on, but Mikleo has to actually work to keep his eyes on Sorey’s face.

“What’s Lailah doing in Marlind?” Sorey asks, and Mikleo takes a moment to draw himself back into reality.

“Nursing,” he says. “Come on – if we hitch a bus from Ladylake it probably won’t be more than a few hours before we get there.” He pauses, then pulls his phone out of his bag. “She might be working, actually. Let me give her a call.”

Sorey watches, bewildered, and mouths “A bus? A call?” as Mikleo scrolls through his contacts and then taps the phone twice to call Lailah. He holds the phone between his ear and his shoulder and beckons Sorey toward him so he can fix a wrinkle in the sweater.

Lailah picks up after only a few rings. “Mikleo? I didn’t expect you to-“

“Ah!” Sorey shouts, and points at the phone. One of the posts on the bed suddenly catches fire, and Sorey jumps to the side. Mikleo stares at it for a moment, and then calmly waves a hand and douses it.

“Is that Sorey?” Lailah asks. “Is he okay?” She giggles then. “Oh, I made a rhyme. Of course he’s okay, he’s with you. What are you calling about?”

“I figured we’d come see you,” Mikleo says.

“She can _hear you through that?_ ” Sorey whispers in awe, and Mikleo nods sagely.

“Are you working?” he asks.

“No, I’m working night shift these days, so I’m not on till eleven,” she says. “Are you taking him back to Pendrago?”

“Eventually, but we’re probably going to explore a bit first-“

“You should stop by Lastonbell. Zaveid’s there for a few days between flights,” Lailah says. “I’m sure he’d love to see you two as well.”

“I’ll look for him,” Mikleo lies, since he has absolutely no intention of actually trying to find Zaveid. “We’ll come find you in Marlind?”

“Yes,” she says. “My house is the pink one, a few houses down from the hospital.”

“I remember,” Mikleo says. “It’s not exactly a house I’m likely to forget.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Lailah’s voice crackles indignantly through the phone.

“We’ll see you in an hour or two, Lailah,” he says, and swipes the phone screen to hang up.

Sorey is still staring at him, eyes shifting from Mikleo’s face to the phone and back. “How does it work?” he asks. Mikleo shrugs.

“Humans have been very busy. It’s not my area of interest,” he explains.

“Could you call anyone you wanted?” Sorey asks, and then, more quietly, adds, “Can I see it?”

Amused, Mikleo holds out the phone. Sorey holds it gingerly with both hands and scrolls from screen to screen with clumsy, unpracticed thumbs. “You have books on here?” he asks, as he finds the EBook app.

“Novels, not history books, but yeah, a few,” Mikleo says, and takes the phone back. “Now, come on – we don’t want to be late, do we?” Sorey shakes his head, but looks a little uncertain. Mikleo picks up on it immediately, and shoves the phone in his pocket before stepping closer to Sorey. “What is it?” When Sorey doesn’t say anything, Mikleo pushes further. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t remember much about Lailah, or any of them, really,” Sorey says. “I remember their names, and I remember what they look like, and I recognized her voice, but I don’t know if I remember how to talk to them.”

“Same way you talk to me, idiot,” Mikleo says automatically. “This is easy, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I’ve always known you,” Sorey says. “You’re in as many of my memories as I am.”

Mikleo has no argument against that. “I’m sure it’ll come back,” he says gently. “It just might take some time. Once you see them all again, it’ll be fine.” He grabs Sorey by the shoulders and looks up at him. “It’ll be fine,” he says again, and Sorey lays one hand over one of Mikleo’s.

“Thanks, Mikleo.”


	5. Marlind I

Lailah opens the door and both Sorey and Mikleo are practically smacked in the face by the smell of chocolate chip cookies. She’s still wearing her oven mitts, as well as a red cowl-neck sweater and some tight tan twill pants. “You can’t tell me not to call you a mom and then open the door looking like that,” Mikleo tells her.

She sticks her tongue out at him but nevertheless beckons them both inside, closes the door, and tugs off her oven mitts. “Oh, Sorey,” she says, and brings her hands up to cover her mouth as she gasps. “You’re a fire seraph!” She reaches out and brushes the red tips of his bangs, smiling. “I should have known.”

Sorey smiles softly at her, slightly taller than she is now that she’s not wearing heels. “I don’t really know what I’m doing as a seraph,” he admits. “It’s all very new.”

“Well, you’ve only been awake for twenty-four hours or so, right?” she laughs. “Come on in, I baked cookies.”

Mikleo watches Sorey intently as the former Shepherd takes a tentative nibble of cookie. He practically sighs with relief when Sorey shoves the rest of the cookie in his mouth. His change into a seraph hasn’t changed his sweet tooth, at least. Lailah, a few feet away, is grinning, and Mikleo can see that she, too, is quite relieved. Sorey turns to Mikleo mid-cookie, aghast, and says, “I don’t need to eat anymore, do I?”

“No, but you still can eat,” Mikleo says. “It’s the same as sleeping. You don’t need it, but it’s still good for you.”

“Huh,” Sorey says, and grabs another cookie.

Lailah watches him gleefully, and then, very suddenly, she claps her hands together. Sorey freezes, cookie halfway to his mouth. “What is it?” he asks.

“You’re here,” she says. “It’s like you never even left at all.”

Sorey looks at her, and then at the floor. The hand still at his side flexes and then relaxes, and his eyes close for just a moment too long to be considered a blink. Mikleo tenses up, aware that something is wrong, but doesn’t say anything, waiting for Sorey to make the first move.

“Yeah,” Sorey laughs, looking back up at Lailah. “It’s good to be back.”

The laugh seems sincere enough, but Mikleo can tell by the tension at the edges of Sorey’s eyes and the slight rigidity of his shoulders that his heart isn’t in it.

_He’s lying,_ Mikleo realizes. _And he’s not half bad at it either._ “Lailah, can you give us a minute?” Mikleo asks, and Lailah nods, wandering out of the room. They listen to her light footsteps echo down the hall as she creates a respectable distance between them. “Sorey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re acting weird,” Mikleo says.

“I am,” Sorey agrees. “I was right, I don’t remember how to talk to her.”

“You were doing fine until just now,” Mikleo tells him.

“It’s the weirdest thing, Mikleo, it’s like I look at her and I know who she is but I don’t remember anything about her. She’s a fire seraph, she travelled with us, she travelled with the previous Shepherd, and that’s all I’ve got,” Sorey says, splaying his hands out in front of him. “I know I should ask her how she’s been, but I know I won’t understand how the way she feels now is different from the way she felt before, because I can’t remember what that was. I don’t even know if she’s acting the same as she always did, or…”

“She is,” Mikleo assures him. “She’s just the same.”

“I was hoping it would all come back,” Sorey says, “but it hasn’t.”

“It’s only been a day,” Mikleo says, somewhat skeptically. “It could come back.”

“I guess I do have all of eternity to relearn what everyone’s like,” Sorey says.

“Yeah,” says Mikleo. “So just relax, eat your cookie and go bring Lailah back in here.”

“What? Me? But I just said I don’t…”

“You don’t remember this about her, but you’re not the first Shepherd to forget her after coming back as a seraph. You can tell her you don’t remember much – she’ll be okay. If anyone’s going to be respectful and helpful about it, it’s Lailah,” Mikleo sighs. “Go on.”

Sorey looks moderately unsure, but then pops his cookie into his mouth and nods sagely. “I believe that,” he says. “She has been very nice, and that feels familiar.”

“She’s like a mom, I think,” Mikleo says, “not that either of us would know. And you _cannot_ tell her I said that.”

“I’m _so_ telling her,” Sorey says, and disappears down the hall.

Mikleo waits in the kitchen for a while, idly watching the clock. Sorey is gone, talking to Lailah, for several hours. Mikleo has been alive for so long that this no longer feels like much time at all to him, but he’s sure it’s a long conversation for Sorey, who has spent the majority of his life asleep. When the two of them return to the kitchen, it’s mid-afternoon, and Sorey looks markedly happier. “Lailah’s going to come with us,” he says.

“To where?” Mikleo sputters, completely taken aback.

“Wherever we’re going,” Sorey answers simply.

“I miss traveling,” Lailah says. “And I missed you two. I’ve hardly seen you in years, Mikleo.”

Mikleo looks away, feeling slightly guilty. It’s true; the only one of the original gang he’d seen remotely reliably was Edna, and that was mostly because she almost always lived in the same city as him at the same time. He’s never bothered to wonder why that is, just accepted that she had to move on to a new place at the same time he did.

She must have really pushed it this time, too. Absolutely no one would believe Edna was a day older than eighteen, but she’s been in Pendrago as long as Mikleo has. Then again, she’s a freelance employee. Demolitionists aren’t in terribly high demand, and certainly not by the same person. If she just changed her name, she could probably stay anywhere indefinitely. Mikleo resolves to ask her why she’s always where he is when he next sees her, but for the time being draws his attention back to Sorey and Lailah. “Where _are_ we going, Sorey?” he asks.

“Lastonbell!” Lailah pipes up. “I promised Zaveid I’d come say hi at least once.”

“Say hi, huh,” Mikleo says wryly, and Lailah’s cheeks color scarlet. “Just make sure Edna doesn’t walk in this time.” He wouldn’t have believed it possible, but her face actually gets even redder. “I’m sure she’s seen worse,” Mikleo adds, and Lailah shakes her head vehemently.

“Drop it!” she squeaks, and Mikleo smirks over her shoulder at Sorey, who looks completely lost.

“They sleep together every now and again,” he tells him, and chuckles quietly to himself as Lailah shakes her head even faster and Sorey’s jaw drops.

“Enough!!! It’s time to go!” she says, and pushes past them both and right out the front door.

“Don’t you have work tonight?” Mikleo asks, following her with his hands in his pockets, the same wry smile on his face. Sorey trots after them both, only slightly less confused.

“I called in sick,” she chirps brightly. “I work five days a week anyway, so they told me to take a few days off!”

“A whole few days, huh,” Mikleo sighs.

“That’s enough time to get anywhere, with those buses,” Sorey says excitedly. “I can’t believe how quickly we got here!”

Mikleo tries to swallow a grin, but can’t contain it. “Just wait until you see what Zaveid does for a living,” he says, but much to Sorey’s disappointment he does not elaborate. Instead, he takes Sorey by the hand and looks him in the eye. “For now, though,” he says, “I have something to show you.”

 

Lailah folds her arms and leans against a tree, watching the boys jump back and forth over the rocks of the river, kicking up splashes of water. She’s smiling – she hasn’t seen Mikleo act so carefree and, well, young, since Sorey was last alive. And she’s glad to see Sorey acting like himself again. “Don’t get water on your shoes!” she calls after Mikleo splashes Sorey with a particularly strong wave, which almost reaches the two pairs of shoes lined up on the riverbank.

“Sure, mom!” Mikleo shouts.

“Not a mom!” Lailah calls back, but she’s less irritated than she sounds.

Mikleo holds out his hand for Sorey to take, and the taller man does so without thinking. “Climb up,” Mikleo says. Sorey hops onto his back without questioning him, twining his arms around Mikleo’s neck. “Now, this river flows the opposite way from where we want to go, but…”

“Is there a boat?” Sorey asks.

“Remember how Dezel and Zaveid could ride the wind?” When Sorey shakes his head, Mikleo closes his eyes, cursing himself silently. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Anyway, I can do them one better now.”

“Oh?” Sorey starts to say, but then Mikleo starts to run. The water curves and bends under him, carrying him and Sorey back toward Marlind with incredible speed. He doesn’t let them go too far, though, and lifts the pair of them up on a small water vortex, depositing them both gently on the riverbank a few hundred feet from where they started.

“Mikleo…” he hears Lailah call from further down the bank.

Sorey sets his feet back on the ground and uncoils his arms from around Mikleo’s neck, letting one hand linger on Mikleo’s shoulder. “That’s incredible!” he gasps. “How did you learn to do that?”

“I had a lot of free time,” Mikleo shrugs. “And a lot of rivers to practice on.”

“Can you do it on the ocean, too?”

“I don’t think so, but I’ve never tried,” Mikleo says. “It never really occurred to me. I didn’t want to go too far.” Sorey smiles, and starts walking back toward Lailah.

“We can’t go to Lastonbell that way, though. We’d leave Lailah behind,” he says. “And the river’s running the wrong way.”

“Yeah, we’ll have to take another bus,” Mikleo sighs, but Sorey’s face lights up. He loves all the new technology the humans have developed. “Come on,” Mikleo says, “let’s go grab Lailah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh that point in the game where Lailah is like "Don't think of me as a mom!! I'm like an older sister :)" was so funny to me because like... honey... from one Mom Friend to another... you're the Mom Friend.....


	6. Lastonbell I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals (is what I would say, but this isn't even the smut chapter so uh. Not that filthy.)
> 
> Still, content warning for alcohol.

The eastern gate of Lastonbell still looks remarkably similar to the way it did six hundred years ago. It still opens onto the forest, and the gate itself still stands tall and stony, albeit rather worn, stark against the bright blue sky. Walking through it again with Sorey and Lailah reminds Mikleo of their first time passing through Lastonbell, and – he laughs a little to himself just thinking about it – their elaborate lies to Sergei as they tried their best to pass through unnoticed.

Sergei is long gone, though, as are the Platinum Knights as an organization. Lastonbell is still a city of artists and artisans, but it is also a city plagued by poverty. Its wealthier residents, including the most successful artists, have moved out to Pendrago, leaving Lastonbell to fall into disrepair. The walls are covered in street art, layered over time and time again. The city is filled with beautiful but aging architecture that was once avant-garde. Mikleo loves every inch of it, but it makes him want to cry when he sees the city’s growing homeless population; he hates to see so many humans in hunger and pain, even without much malevolence.

Lastonbell has held strange feelings for Mikleo for as long as he can remember. His most prominent memory of Lastonbell is from the last time Sorey was there, when they stood in the park together and gazed up at the stars, and Mikleo had realized he would willingly give up all those stars, would give up the power of sight entirely, if it meant Sorey could live and survive. He’d known Sorey wouldn’t stand for that, though, or even want to hear it. There they’d stood, talking and staring at the sky and Mikleo was completely, hopelessly in love and absolutely terrified of it.

He couldn’t tell Sorey then. He’d been about to, but then Sorey had laid out his plan, and Mikleo couldn’t bear to try and start something that would so soon be over, nor could he bear the thought of rejection and Sorey going to sleep for hundreds of years feeling odd about it. He’d worried that Sorey would be distracted and compromised in battle, too.

He’d worried about a lot of things. He still worries, although his worries are different now.

“I remember this!” Sorey exclaims as they walk past the park. He runs ahead of Mikleo and Lailah, straight up the steps, and leans over the railing to look out at the city. Mikleo jogs after him, reminded all too strongly of the last time he and Sorey were in the park all those years ago. “It goes on forever!” Sorey says, and looks back at Mikleo, beaming. “It didn’t used to be this big, did it?”

“No, it’s kind of run into Pendrago in the west,” Mikleo explains as he walks to stand next to Sorey. Their shoulders touch as they lean together and observe the winding curves of Lastonbell’s myriad streets. “It’s kind of like one big city, except that it isn’t.”

“It’s amazing!” Sorey says, eyes sparkling. “Humans built all this?”

“Well, most of it,” Lailah chimes in. “They had a bit of help from a few earth seraphim in building the foundations of a lot of these buildings. Edna actually helped break up a lot of the rocks in the quarry that were used to build some of the older ones.” She sighs dreamily, gazing out at the expansive city. “I wish some of the newer buildings were also made out of stone. Those houses were so gorgeous in their youth.”

From beneath them comes Zaveid’s deep voice. “Lailah? That you?”

Mikleo looks down to see him staring up at them, shading his eyes with one hand. His hair is as long as ever, loose over his torso. He’s wearing a very deep v-neck and some tight black pants, looking like a wannabe supermodel as usual. “Hi, Mikkey,” he calls, and then squints harder up at them. “Holy shit,” he says, and looks to the northeast and then back up at them. “Sorey?”

Zaveid does not bother to take the stairs, just jumps and rides a small wind current up and over the railing and into the park. “You know, people like you are the reason that a lot of people don’t like ser—“ Mikleo starts, but Zaveid pushes right past him to look Sorey up and down.

“Shit, it _is_ you!” he says, and claps Sorey heartily on the back. “I can’t believe it! Back already!”

“It’s been more than six hundred years,” Mikleo reminds him pointedly.

“Has it? Man, I’m gettin’ old,” Zaveid laughs. “So, Sleeping Beauty, what’s it like being back?”

Sorey throws up his hands. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he says slowly. “I’m awake now, and that’s kind of all there is to it.”

“Aw, c’mon. Any good dreams in your six hundred years of sleeping?”

“A… a couple,” Sorey says, and averts his eyes.

“Oho! _Really_ good dreams,” Zaveid laughs. “Fill an old man in on a Shepherd’s dirtiest fantasies.”

Sorey blushes crimson. “Uh…”

“Let him be, Zaveid,” Lailah scolds, and tugs at his hair lightly.

“What, worried he’s gonna set a nearby bush on fire?” Zaveid snickers as his eyes scan over the red tips of Sorey’s hair.

“Is that common?” Sorey blurts out. “It’s not just me?”

“Happens to the best of us,” Zaveid says with a wink. “Though there’s a surefire cure for it.” Sorey looks at him expectantly. “Just relax, baby!” Zaveid crows with his hands on his hips.

Sorey looks like he’s about to ask for clarification when Mikleo intercedes. “We were just passing through,” he tells Zaveid somewhat caustically.

“I’m always just passing through,” Zaveid says with a wink. “Though this time I’ve got a few full days off to pass wherever I please. What do you say we all relax together?”

“Don’t be crass, Zaveid,” Mikleo groans, disgust plain on his face.

“Whoa, there, Mikkey, get your mind out of the gutter. I’m saying we should get drunk. Not that I don’t have a couple flight attendants to attend to, but they can wait, whereas Sorey here cannot. Besides, good old-fashioned liquor never hurt anyone, right?”

Lailah glances at Mikleo apprehensively. She’s all too aware of his habits in the past few years. “I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea,” she starts to say, but then Zaveid continues, addressing Sorey this time:

“It’ll be fun, Shepherd. You probably don’t remember much, right? This is all probably really weird for you. Well, we all get drunk, and then no one remembers anything – we’re just who we are! No memory strings attached! What do you say?”

“I’ve never drunk anything before,” Sorey says. “I never really had time, and with the malevolence I thought maybe…”

“Malevolence is a thing of the past,” Zaveid says.

“Mostly,” Mikleo interjects. “It’s here, always, but it’s not like it was.”

“I still don’t know if…” Lailah starts, but this time Mikleo cuts her off.

“Let’s do it, Sorey,” he says. “Zaveid’s right. It’ll be a good way to step back from it all for a while.”

“I mean, I do feel a little overwhelmed… aw, what the heck. I’ll try it,” Sorey says.

 

So it is that they return to Mikleo’s apartment in Pendrago, armed with several bags of booze, a few bottles of mixers, and one largely inexplicable DVD of a soap opera that Zaveid is shamelessly obsessed with.

Mikleo never allowed himself to bring alcohol into his apartment, afraid of what he might do with it. But here, now, with Sorey and Lailah and everyone else – including Edna, who appeared at his doorstep just as the rest of them rounded the corner – he thinks he’ll be okay.

They quickly learn that Sorey is an absolute lightweight, and that he loves Bailey’s. “It tastes like your ice cream, Mik,” he grins.

“I certainly hope not,” Mikleo says with disdain as he sips a strawberry margarita. “I leave alcohol out of my desserts, thank you very much.”

“Tell that to my Grand Marnier chocolate cake,” Lailah says.

“That’s your dessert, not mine,” Mikleo says, nose in the air, and takes another sip of his drink.

Edna is playing bartender, handing out strangely-named drinks right and left whenever they’re needed. She hands Sorey a Bailey’s-based mixed drink with a wry smile. “Here,” she says, “have a Screaming Orgasm.”

Sorey, who is already quite drunk, happily takes it and says, “I will, thank you,” causing Zaveid to literally spit out his drink. Mikleo shoots him a glare and jerks his head toward the kitchen in a not-so-subtle attempt to get Zaveid to clean up his mess.

“Mikkey, you’ve barely had anything to drink,” Zaveid notices, quick to draw attention away from his spit-take and the resulting spray on the floor. “You’ve been nursing that margarita for forty-five minutes.”

“Don’t pressure him,” Lailah says quietly.

“Do you really want to be the sober one if the rest of us are smashed?” Zaveid asks Mikleo with one eyebrow raised, and knocks back the rest of his gin and tonic. He holds up his glass and Edna takes it and goes to refill it. Zaveid bends back over the chair to grab the TV remote and presses play on his terrible soap opera. He turns the subtitles on, but does keep the volume blessedly low.

For that Mikleo is grateful, but he still realizes that he really, really doesn’t want to be sober if Zaveid, who is already three drinks in, is hammered, so he starts drinking faster. He practically chugs the remainder of his margarita, and the second he finishes it, Edna places a peach-colored drink in front of him. “Sex on the Beach, Meebo?” she asks with a smirk, and then grabs her own drink and settles on the floor next to the chair Zaveid is sprawled all over.

Mikleo blushes as he scowls, but drinks it anyway. He’s had one before – he must have been pretty drunk when he ordered it to have placed that order without stuttering – but he has to admit that whatever Edna put in hers is better than the one he had before. He suspects it’s also quite a bit stronger, though. He leans back on the couch and tells himself to relax and just enjoy his sweet fruity drink, however spiked it may be.

“Man, if we weren’t in your apartment this would be a good joke,” Zaveid says, stirring his new drink. At first glance all it looks like to Mikleo is a mixture of whiskey and Mountain Dew. He decides not to ask Edna what she actually put in it, though he suspects it involves at least one energy drink. Zaveid laughs preemptively at his own joke and then starts, “So, five seraphs walk into a bar-“

Edna smacks him in the shins with her umbrella, sipping her drink.

“Another Orgasm for Sorey?” she asks, looking at the newborn seraph quizzically. Sorey shakes his head, smiles sleepily, and shifts onto his side so that he lies across the couch. He lowers his head into Mikleo’s lap, and then rests one hand on Mikleo’s knee. Edna smirks, shoots a knowing look up at Zaveid, and sips her drink once again.

Mikleo, without thinking, cards his free hand through Sorey’s hair, lightly running his fingers from the crown of his head to the base of his neck. Sorey’s eyes close contentedly, and Mikleo moves his fingers around to the side of his jaw. “You owe me twenty bucks,” Edna says lightly to Zaveid, who grumbles quietly to himself and downs his drink.

“Not yet I don’t,” he mutters.

Mikleo is almost done with his drink now, and Edna is already up and pouring him another one. Just as before, it’s in his hand the second he finishes the previous one.

This time, though, he pushes it back at her. “I’m good,” he says.

“Yeah,” she agrees as he trails one finger absently up and down Sorey’s jawline. “You are.” She takes it back and starts to drink it herself. Lailah, perched on the arm of Zaveid’s chair, takes it all in with stride and smiles to herself as Mikleo declines the drink. “You know, Sorey,” Edna says, “it’s a really good thing you came back as a seraph. Imagine if you’d come back as a human only to live another sixty years or so and then die again.”

“Edna!” Lailah gasps, but Sorey seems unperturbed and Mikleo’s attention is clearly elsewhere.

“What? It’s the truth,” Edna says, and takes a solid gulp of the mixed drink in her hand. “Besides, I was just testing to see if either of them is listening. And they’re not.”

Lailah clicks her tongue, swirls the mostly alcohol-free soda mixture in her cup, and watches as Sorey rolls over so that his face is turned up toward Mikleo’s. Sorey’s cheeks are flushed from the alcohol, and his green eyes are just the slightest bit unfocused at first, but they focus up the second Mikleo’s eyes meet his. “Y’re so good, Mik,” Sorey murmurs. “So good ‘n’ so pretty.”

Mikleo bites his lip and fills Sorey’s empty glass with water.

“Always so thoughtful,” Sorey continues, his words running together as he curls his fingers around the cup. “Came with me ‘n’ you didn’t even have to, an’ you waited all this time an’… your eyes are so pretty. Never seen anythin’ else like ‘em.”

Lailah stands, tugs Zaveid to his feet, and beckons for Edna to come along with her. “Time to go,” she whispers, and Edna rolls her eyes.

“Are you kidding? I want to film this,” she snorts, already pulling out her phone.

“And my DVD is still in Mikkey’s player,” Zaveid objects, though neither of the girls pays him any heed.

“Time. To go,” Lailah insists, and grabs Edna with her other hand.

“Oh, come on, I’ve waited like six hundred years for this!” Edna whines. “If they’re gonna be gross I should at least be able to blackmail them with it later…”

But Lailah is actually dragging her toward the door so forcefully that Edna’s feet no longer touch the ground. Edna is powerless to stop her. “We’ve, uh, got to go run and do some… stuff, Mikleo!” Lailah calls over her shoulder as she ushers Zaveid and Edna out in front of her. “Important stuff! And things! Nothing you need to worry about though, okay bye!” But Mikleo hardly notices.

One of Sorey’s hands drifts up and cups Mikleo’s cheek, his thumb rubbing gently across Mikleo’s cheekbone. “An’ so soft,” Sorey says, taking his thumb down across Mikleo’s lips. “Just wanna…” He closes his eyes, clearly concentrating very hard, and then pushes himself to sit up. He takes Mikleo by the shoulders and looks at him very seriously. “’m gonna say something, Mik, an’ you have to listen, because I’ve been thinking about it for a really long time, an’ I should have said it before I went to sleep, but I have to do it now.”

Mikleo has to remind himself to breathe. This is not what he expected from a night of drinking at all.

“Y’re my best friend, you always have been, for as long as I can remember, but recently – I mean, not recently, but it feels that way to me – I don’t know what’s happening, all I know is I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was fourteen an’ now we’re both like seven hundred years old, and I think maybe you wanna kiss me too but I don’t know an’-“

“Sorey,” Mikleo says gently. “You’re rambling.”

“I’m nervous an’ I think I’m very drunk,” Sorey says.

“I think you’re right,” Mikleo says, “which is why we can’t kiss right now.” Sorey’s face falls, and Mikleo quickly shakes his head. “I want to, you have no idea how much I want to,” he says. “Well,” he laughs a little then, as he watches Sorey bite his lip in frustration, “maybe you do. But not like this. Not when I’m drunk, and not when you’re drunk.”

“Mik…”

“I want to remember every second of it,” Mikleo says firmly. “And I want _you_ to remember every second of it. And I… I spent a lot of time drunk when you were asleep. Probably too much. So even though I want to make some happy drunk memories to replace all the sad ones, I want to remember everything about kissing you.”

Sorey tackles him then, pulling him into a tight hug and sending them both back onto the couch so that they’re lying chest to chest. Sorey smells like alcohol and chocolate and almonds, his breath sweet and thick against Mikleo’s neck. It takes every ounce of Mikleo’s tipsy willpower to just hug Sorey back, to keep from pressing his lips to Sorey’s neck, to only allow his fingers to slide through Sorey’s hair and not curl into it and grip it hard so he can pull him back and kiss him.

They lie like that for a few minutes, while Sorey occasionally mumbles “you smell good” into Mikleo’s hair, until eventually Mikleo pushes Sorey up and off him so that they’re seated next to each other on the couch again. “We ought to sleep this off,” he says, and Sorey blinks at him slowly.

“You get the bed,” Sorey says, holding to their promise of the previous night.

“You are way drunker than I am, Sorey, you get the bed,” Mikleo argues.

“We promised,” Sorey says stubbornly.

“That was before this happened.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sorey shakes his head. “Still a promise.”

“I can sleep on the couch,” Mikleo insists. “It’s just as comfortable.”

“I need you in the same room as me,” Sorey says, and looks Mikleo in the eyes. “Please.”

Mikleo cannot say no to Sorey’s sad drunk puppy face, so he sighs, stands up, and offers Sorey his hand. “Come on, then,” he says. “Let’s go get ready for bed.”

Sorey takes his hand and does not let it go as Mikleo leads him toward the bedroom. He only briefly lets go so that he can pull off the cardigan, undo his belt, and drop his pants so that he’s standing in the t-shirt and boxers. Mikleo likewise removes his more formal clothing, shedding his sweater and button-down so that he’s just in his undershirt, and trading in his slacks for the pair of pajama pants he hasn’t bothered to put on in weeks. The two look at each other for a moment; Mikleo tries very hard not to let his gaze linger too long on the way the definition of Sorey’s chest shows through his shirt, or on the v of his hips that is just barely visible in the gap between the shirt and boxers.

Sorey grabs Mikleo’s hand again and climbs into Mikleo’s queen-sized bed. “Sorey,” Mikleo says gently, slightly startled, “I can’t sleep on the floor if you have my hand.”

“I know,” Sorey says, and refuses to let go.

Grumbling quietly to himself, Mikleo climbs in beside him and lies down as far away as he thinks he reasonably can. Sorey, however, is having none of it, and rolls over to be closer. “What’s wrong?” he asks, and Mikleo looks up at the ceiling.

“It’s hard for me to believe it’s you when you’re this drunk,” Mikleo says. “Though I’m sure I’m hard to believe right now, too.”

“I do mean it, you know,” Sorey says, eyes flitting from Mikleo’s eyes to his lips. “You believe that, right?”

“You were always a terrible liar, so, yes, I believe you,” Mikleo says with a laugh, and turns his head to look at Sorey. “I’m just worried if we sleep in this bed together, we’ll do something stupid,” he says.

“It’s not stupid if it’s with you,” Sorey says sincerely, and presses his head into the pillow. “And we’ll be good. It’ll be fine, promise.”

“You’re right,” Mikleo says with a shade of a smile, and then he rolls over to face the other way. “Goodnight, Sorey.”

“G’night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. So I meant to post this chapter before I left school four days ago but then I kept reworking it and reworking it and reworking it and I'm still not super happy with it but, all you really need to know is that I actually started writing this fic with the intent to write Sorey as a cuddly drunk and lo and behold, here he is: the cuddliest, fluffiest, drunk.
> 
> 2\. I don't know how or when I started collecting terrible dads but somehow I did, so here I am loving Zaveid unconditionally and inserting him into fic at every chance I get, so expect to see more of him.


	7. Pendrago III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took so long because I wanted to give those of you who (like me) don't always give a shit about sexytimes/smutfic something to read. So, if you did not come here to read a good solid dicking, skip to the line, otherwise, uh?? Enjoy yourselves

When Mikleo wakes up, he’s warm, much warmer than he has been in a very long time. He’s still lying on his side, but Sorey is behind him now, curled around him with his face pressed into the back of Mikleo’s neck. One of his arms is crooked around Mikleo’s abdomen, and his fingers rest gently against Mikleo’s chest.

Mikleo can feel Sorey’s shoulders slowly rising and falling as he sleep breathes. Occasionally Sorey’s thumb twitches against Mikleo’s skin, and Mikleo shivers a little. His head is clear now, clear enough for him to wonder how much of the previous night Sorey remembers. If he remembers anything of what he said. If sober Sorey really does think the same.

Sorey’s lips press, hot and wet, against the back of Mikleo’s neck, and his breathing changes. The arm curved across Mikleo’s chest tightens ever so slightly, and Mikleo turns his head. “Sorey?”

“Sorry,” Sorey mumbles. “This is okay, right?”

“Yeah, it’s okay,” Mikleo says, smiling. “How much do you remember?”

“Remember?” Sorey asks, eyes wide.

Mikleo closes his eyes and turns his face back the other way. _Nothing, then,_ he thinks as the brief smile fades. _Of course._

After a long pause, Sorey says, “This was it.” There’s a note of pure contentment to his voice, but Mikleo notices that he also sounds almost apprehensive.

“What?”

“When I dreamed, when I was asleep,” Sorey says slowly, “it was always this. Just… holding you. Or being held. The good dreams, I mean.”

“Were there bad dreams?” Mikleo asks, without turning his head to try and look at Sorey again.

“Yes, but I don’t want to talk about them.”

“Sorey...”

“Maybe later, but now I just want to stay here. Is that okay?”

“Of course it’s okay,” Mikleo says, and snuggles in closer, pulling Sorey’s arm tighter around him and laying his hand delicately over Sorey’s.

They stay that way for just a few minutes before Sorey nudges the back of Mikleo’s head with his nose. “Mikleo,” he says. Mikleo moves his head slightly, to show he’s listening. “Can I kiss you now?”

Mikleo turns to look at him, feels Sorey’s arm drift across his chest as he rolls to face him. “You still want to?”

“Desperately.” Sorey’s green eyes are wide, filled with uncertainty. “Was I wrong? Do you not want to—“

Mikleo closes the distance between them instantly, grabbing Sorey’s face and meeting his lips with surprising force. Sorey kisses back immediately, even though his eyes are still open wide with surprise. He’s relatively chaste at first, as Mikleo might have expected, but then his eyes close and that same hand trails down Mikleo’s chest and under his shirt, traces circles across his stomach, and grips him by the waist. Mikleo’s mouth opens slightly in surprise, and Sorey takes the opportunity to experiment with tongue.

Mikleo’s response comes as a surprise to them both. A low moan issues from deep in his throat, and he freezes for a moment in shock. Sorey studies him momentarily through hooded eyes, and then pulls him back, scraping his fingernails over Mikleo’s hipbones. This time, Mikleo’s head arches back and he gasps, and it’s Sorey who freezes. “Did I hurt you?” he whispers.

Mikleo shakes his head, so small a movement it’s almost imperceptible, and then pulls himself on top of Sorey and ruts his hips against Sorey’s. Sorey groans quietly, and then his hands are everywhere, ghosting over Mikleo’s sides and pulling desperately at his shirt, clawing at the skin of Mikleo’s back.

The water seraph has always been ticklish, especially in the ribs, but now it’s like every part of him that was once ticklish is instead sensitive and very, very hungry for Sorey’s touch. He leans in and presses his lips to Sorey’s neck, sucking gently at the soft space where his jaw, neck, and ear intersect. Mikleo’s teeth close around Sorey’s earlobe and he tugs on it a little, causing Sorey to moan and buck his hips up against his.

Sorey finally succeeds in pulling Mikleo’s shirt off, and pulls himself up so that Mikleo is straddling his hips, likewise tugging at his shirt. Mikleo is quicker, though, and good at multi-tasking: he has one hand working to remove Sorey’s shirt and the other rubbing circles into the skin just above Sorey’s cock. All the while, he keeps kissing Sorey’s neck, moving his lips up and down, across to the other side of his neck. He pauses only to pull Sorey’s shirt up and over his head before swiftly diving back in. Sorey grabs him by the waist and pulls him down to grind against him, but Mikleo resists and pulls back to watch as Sorey’s teeth dig into his lip, frustrated.

Sorey has a good counter move, though. He wastes no time in sliding his hand past the waistband of Mikleo’s pajamas and taking him fully in hand. Mikleo gasps again and can’t help but push into Sorey’s hands as he pulls and pushes gently back and forth. He tries to reach for Sorey’s dick, but the taller man pushes him down so their heads are at the opposite end of the bed from where they started.

Sorey starts kissing his way down the length of Mikleo’s body, and Mikleo loses all ability to think, just curls his fingers into the sheets and arches his back up and away from the mattress. Sorey pulls the waistband off with one hand and then, with almost no warning, flicks his tongue over the head of Mikleo’s cock and slowly takes it into his mouth.

Mikleo moans, far louder than any of the noises he made earlier, and Sorey pushes further down, tonguing over every inch of him. Mikleo is well aware he’s not going to last much longer, but he manages to choke out Sorey’s name in two short breaths. Sorey draws back, rolls his tongue over the head again, and grins. “Mm?” he purrs, trailing one finger up Mikleo’s length.

“Fuckin’ – ahh,” is all Mikleo manages to get out as Sorey lazily draws the same finger back down again.

“You want me to?” Sorey is still smiling, teasing.

Mikleo tries very hard to glare at him, because the answer should be painfully obvious, but Sorey rubs his thumb over the head of his cock again and he instead pants out, “Yes, fuck, please!”

“I’m going to need your help,” Sorey says sincerely as he pulls his boxers down with one hand, keeping the other poised over Mikleo.

“Fuck, anything.”

“I need water,” Sorey says coolly as he draws his hand down between Mikleo’s thighs and around to his ass.

Mikleo is 90% sure he has absolutely no control over his own limbs right now, let alone an entire element, but he tries anyway. His hand twitches as he tries to manipulate water into existence and then a reasonable shape. Sorey watches him, keeps working his hand, slowly working his way in and back out of Mikleo. “It would help,” Mikleo gasps, “if you would stop being so damn distracting.”

“Aw, where’s the fun in that?” Sorey says with a smile, and leans over Mikleo to kiss him along his collarbone.

It’s just a gentle enough reprieve that Mikleo manages to actually conjure the water he needs, and it brings Sorey close enough that Mikleo can fold the water over him, wrapping him in it. He somehow manages to hold it together as Sorey adds another finger, presses further into him and sends a shiver of pleasure running up Mikleo’s spine.

“Fuck, Sorey,” Mikleo manages to squeeze out as Sorey eases his fingers free and rocks his hips against Mikleo’s. “Just – fuckin’…”

Sorey looks down at him, looking very intent on teasing him even more, but Mikleo’s flushed face and raw lips prove too tempting. Sorey pins his wrists over his head, kisses him hard, and then slowly starts to ease his way in.

Mikleo, however, is ready and very impatient. He wraps his legs around Sorey’s waist and pulls him down and in faster, clamping down on Sorey’s bottom lip with his teeth. Sorey’s mouth opens against his and he lets out a faint noise of surprise, but then pulls back and thrusts again. Mikleo struggles to free his hands – he needs to hold onto Sorey, pull him down again, harder – but Sorey doesn’t relent, just eases in and out, again and again. Mikleo latches his legs tighter around Sorey and pulls him in further, rocking his hips up and off the surface of the mattress.

It’s all he can take, and Mikleo cries out, arched all the way back as he orgasms. Just watching him is all it takes for Sorey to release as well, rapidly thrusting a few more times before he comes and collapses atop Mikleo.

They both lie there, twitching and panting, and Mikleo kisses Sorey on the cheek.

“Think you’re going to remember that?” Sorey asks as he slowly pulls out.

Mikleo hits him with a pillow.

 

* * *

 

“How did you know how to do any of that?” Mikleo asks as he heads into the shower. Sorey follows him, stepping into the small shower and forcing them close together again.

“I felt like I should do certain things,” Sorey says, avoiding his gaze, “so I did them.”

“You read some sexy books, didn’t you,” Mikleo says. It’s not a question. He can always tell when Sorey is lying.

“Not on purpose!” Sorey sputters. “They were just there. Poorly labeled. On one of the shelves in Rose’s old hideout.”

“See? You do remember some things from before,” Mikleo says cheerfully, and turns on the water. It’s freezing cold, and Sorey squeaks. The bottom of the shower curtain catches fire, but Mikleo easily steers the water from the shower to put it out. “Sorry,” he says, smirking. “Mean trick.” He tickles Sorey a little across the ribs, and Sorey tickles him lightly back, but they don’t get too far before Sorey has Mikleo pressed up against the cold tile walls, the now-lukewarm water washing over them both.

“Lailah said I only remember the most emotionally salient information,” Sorey says, pressing his forehead to Mikleo’s. “And I do remember thinking about it a lot…”

“Pure Shepherd not so pure, then,” Mikleo says, smiling and leaning up to kiss him. His hair is down, falling in long wet waves over his shoulders.

“Still pretty pure,” Sorey says, and kisses Mikleo again. “Unlike _someone_ who has a very foul mouth in bed.” Mikleo splashes him, rolls his eyes, and leans up to kiss him on the nose.

 

“You’re making breakfast? You?” Mikleo asks when he emerges from the bedroom, simply dressed in a comfortable tee and his pajama pants. He doesn’t expect to leave the apartment much, if at all, for the rest of the day. Sorey is in the kitchen, frying a couple of eggs on the electric stove and wearing another of Mikleo’s shirts and the pair of Pendrago U sweatpants that Mikleo won a few years back from a raffle at a staff party. “You can work my stove?”

“It has a switch that says ‘on,’” Sorey points out. “And the dials are pretty easy to work, just push and twist. It’s like a ruin puzzle.” He’s grinning, pretty proud of himself for that comparison. “Honestly, it’s amazing – there’s as much new stuff to figure out as there is old.”

Mikleo’s face softens, and he feels a goofy lovestruck smile take hold of his features. There’s no stopping it. “I love you,” he says.

Sorey sets fire to the eggs.

Mikleo extinguishes them with a wave of his hand. “Sorry,” he mumbles, blushing.

“ _You’re_ sorry? I keep setting your house on fire!”

“That one was my fault,” Mikleo says. “And so was the shower curtain.” Sorey pulls the pan off the stove and looks around helplessly for a place to drop his torched eggs. Mikleo slips the pan out of his hand and crosses the kitchen to dump the eggs into the trash. “I do mean it, though,” he says as he pulls two new eggs from the fridge. “I love you.”

Sorey swallows nervously, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “I love you, too,” he says tentatively, and then says it again, more boldly. “I love you.”

Mikleo shakes his head affectionately and cracks two new eggs into the pan, gently pushing Sorey away from the stovetop. “You don’t have to wear it out,” he says, giving Sorey a sideways look.

“I don’t think that wears out, Mikleo,” Sorey laughs, tucking his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants and leaning against the counter so he can relax as he watches Mikleo cook. “I don’t know why I was so startled,” he says as Mikleo digs a spatula under one egg to flip it over-easy. “You keep a little statue of me next to your bed.”

“I – there’s an explanation for that!” Mikleo stammers, pointedly keeping his gaze very focused on his eggs. When Sorey says nothing, just watches him and grins, Mikleo continues, “It’s a recreation of a famous statue! A student gave it to me after saying one of my lectures about the statue was very inspiring!”

“You lecture about statues of me?” Sorey asks, eyebrows skyward.

Mikleo realizes there’s probably no way out of the hole he’s digging himself, but tries anyway. “I lecture about a lot of statues!”

“Age of Chaos statues?” Sorey prods.

“Well, yes, but…” Mikleo shakes his head. His hair, still wet, whips back and forth against his back, spraying Sorey lightly with water.

“Are there statues of you?” Sorey asks then.

“How could there possibly be statues of me? Nobody else could see me but Rose,” Mikleo reminds him.

“She could have described you,” Sorey says. “Though she probably wouldn’t have done you justice.”

Mikleo rolls his eyes. “Lay it on thick, why don’t you,” he drawls. “You’re almost as much of a shameless flirt as Zaveid.”

“I’m serious,” Sorey says in earnest. “I don’t think a verbal description would do you justice!”

Mikleo shakes his head, smiling, and flips the other egg.

“I guess you could have drawn them a self-portrait,” Sorey says. “Though it doesn’t seem like you made any.”

“How would you know what I did or didn’t draw?” Mikleo asks, glancing sideways at him, but then his pale face grows even paler as Sorey pulls a very old leather-bound notebook from one pocket of his sweatpants.

“Because,” Sorey says, grinning, “it looks like you only ever drew me. And a couple dragons, and a couple really cute cartoons of the Normin, but…”

“Give that here!” Mikleo squeaks, reaching for the sketchbook with his free hand. Sorey holds it up over his head, just out of Mikleo’s reach.

“What, you want me to put it in the eggs?” Sorey asks, sticking his tongue out.

“Were you just transferring that from one pair of pants to the next?” Mikleo complains. “Have you just been keeping it on you at all times?”

“What? I like to look at it. Now I know how you were spending the time I was spending writing poetry.”

Mikleo actually groans then. “Oh, no, not the poetry,” he says.

“Oh, Mikleo, you and I really stick-leo,” Sorey says, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek and then dancing away before Mikleo can swat him with the spatula. “Roses are red, violets are blue – they’re not, though, are they? They’re kind of purple… like your eyes, but bluer.”

“Is this a poem or a tangent?” Mikleo asks, reaching for the sketchbook again with one hand as he turns the stove off with the other.

“Your eyes are like purple gems, you used to wear a diadems,” Sorey tries again, laughing as he continually keeps the book just out of Mikleo’s reach. Mikleo grumbles quietly and gives up for the time being, instead transferring the eggs from the pan to a plate. “Your strength is in the water, but mine is in something hotter!” Mikleo tries to bargain the plate of eggs for the sketchbook, but Sorey shakes his head, still grinning like a madman. “You’re as pretty as a peach, I would like to see you teach!”

Mikleo decides to try another tactic. He balances the plate of eggs on one hand, grabs Sorey by the shirt with the other, and pulls him down to kiss him, thus interrupting the next string of terrible rhymes. While Sorey is distracted, Mikleo releases his collar and snatches the sketchbook out of his hand. He pulls away from the kiss, smirking, and then pecks Sorey once again on the lips for good measure. “Breakfast is ready,” he says, and saunters off toward the kitchen table with both eggs and sketchbook in hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has this been a ploy to write modern domestic fluff all along? Probably
> 
> More of your regularly (lol as if I update at all regularly) scheduled AU exploration at some point/whenever I finish the next bit


End file.
